Many children and adults of all ages are victims of bullying. When bullying occurs, there is always two people involved, the one doing the bullying and the one getting bullied. Bullying is aggressive behavior among children, that is repeated over and over throughout school, social media and work. Aggressive behavior involves mistreating or harassing someone. It is now a common feature that has become an international issue. A serious issue, which causes negative high effect on the victims. In the United States, 1 in 3 students are bullied in a school year. When bullying occurs, it affects bullying victims in different ways, leading to depression, suicide, short- and long-term consequences, taking actions to their own hands (school shootings). Children or adults who bully use their power in different ways, which are verbal and physical bullying. Due to social media bullying rated have increased throughout the years.
Where Does It Happen?
Bullying occurs in two ways, traditional bullying and cyberbullying. Traditional bullying is when bullying happens face-to-face, for example, at school. As advancement has happened with technology, it went from ‘traditional bullying’ to cyberbullying. Cyberbullying occurs through technology, for example, social media and texting. Bullying has always been around; bullying happens when people try to compete, have popularity, or because the one bullying has problems and tries to make people feel bad so they can feel better. These two are mostly the same, however they both hurt other differently. The advancement of technology has made it easier for people to bully. Technology makes it easier for bullies to hurt their victims since the victim is unable to know who the person responsible behind technology is. Which makes it easier for bullies to say even meaner things to their target. Cyberbullying is a problem because people don’t usually report it since they have no attacker to blame. So, victims will carry their bullies around throughout the day without knowing who it is. For this same reason, bullying doesn’t just stop at school, but follows targets even after school. Because of technology, group chats messages can be created through social media. Within the group chats, the one who created it can choose who is able to be in the group. Which makes it easier to talk about the gossip that has been going around about others. The gossip that is talked about in these group chats are about people who these bullies call ‘ugly or fat’. There have been many incidents where personal information has been leaked out to other people that would be disturbing to the target. Another source that is considered bullying is when a person blogs anonymous, stating information of their victim.
Verbal and Physical Bullying
Verbal bullying examples are teasing, name-calling, inappropriate sexual comments, threatening to cause victims any harm, spreading rumors, and taunting. Bullies tend to verbally bully the ones who are insecure about themselves and those whom have different physical traits. Different physical traits that are called out by bullies are having big ears or eyes, a person is overweight, too much hair or a person is too short. When sexual comments are said, they are usually said to a woman, which makes them feel very uncomfortable. Physical bullying is when someone hits, kicks, pinches, trips, spits on someone, breaking someone’s things, and making mean gestures. One article stated that “their research indicates that males are significantly more physically victimized than females....” (Li, 2006). This includes fist fighting (physical) rather than verbal bullying as with women.
Depression and Suicide
Traditional bullying and cyberbullying are the biggest cause for depression. Depression is a disease that not only does it affect the person’s life, but also social relationships with everyone. Low self-esteem, anxiety, loneliness and suicide are big factors caused because of depression. Today, in our society, it is easy for children and young adults to have access to electronics, having an entrance to social media like Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, Instagram and other social media; because of this, bullying now doesn’t just stop at school. Psychological and physical pain is associated with suicide. Due to the pain the person has, it results in self-harm, causing suicide. Suicides happen when people are cyberbullied by peers; sharing things that are personal on social media. Victims feel discouraged or worthless because they are convinced ‘they don’t belong’, since they are unable to make friends sometimes. However, people who are victims of traditional bullying tend to have higher impacts with depression, low self-esteem and anxiety. However, it follows victims home now, bullies can now send messages or post things that can keep hurting their victims even after school. Victims might feel like there is nothing more than they can do, but keep it to themselves, so they don’t report the issue. As much as they try to avoid being bullied it haunts them through social media. Sometimes, bullies don’t know that their behavior or actions cause harm to others because it is considered ‘normal’ at their household.
What Causes Bullying?
Bullying behavior is so common among children of different ages that without a doubt there is a great interest in preventing it. School seems to be the most common setting to experience bullying. Since bullying “infringes on the child’s right to human dignity, privacy, freedom, and security” (Aluede et al., 2008), it is important to understand the causes of bullying.
According to Oyaziwo, bullies tend to target others who are different to them and investigate taking advantage of those differences to embarrass the victims. Oyaziwo believes bullies select victims who will not retaliate because they are different: fat, wear glasses, have big ears, or obvious physical appearances that are easy to pick on. In addition, victims are usually people who are anxious or insecure since they are easy to pick on.
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Additionally, bullies engage in this type of behavior because they are dealing with a broken home or they are mistreated by their own families. The article, ‘A Review of the Extent, Nature, Characteristics and Effects of Bullying Behavior in School’, states that bullies see their behavior as normal because they have been growing up in families where everyone screams, gets angry, and constantly put each other down. Needless to say, many bullies have experienced social problems, aggression, power imbalanced, and traumatic experiences. According to Litwiller and Brausch, youths who experience violence are more likely to act violent towards others. With this in mind, a cycle will continue to repeat itself. The victim could eventually become a bully, thus increasing the number of bullies and victims.
Other studies suggest that people engage in bullying activities because bullying is self-reinforcing. When their friends support and laugh at their actions, they tend to repeat the behavior to continue getting approval from their peers.
Victims in Great Danger
Since bullying can experience behaviors that are usually intended to harm and caused over a period of time, the effects can last a lifetime. In the United States, suicide is the 3rd cause of death, and sad to say, some studies have identified bullying as cause to these suicides. The number of victims and aggressors, in relation to bullying, keeps increasing since the options to bully grew tremendously with the technology. Although there are other factors which might lead to suicide, like depression, low self-esteem, and anxiety, these factors might be triggered through bullying. Studies have shown the big correlation between suicide and bullying. Since studies have shown that engaging in violent behavior might increase suicidal thoughts, engaging in violent bullying increases the suicidal chances. Moreover, unsafe sex is also related to bullying and youth suicidal behavior. Because they have been involved in bullying, they might seek the positive attention that a sexual relationship might offer. However, reports suggest that this sexual behavior could be a way to cope with negative consequences of bullying. To add to the negative situation the victim is already in by being bullied, engaging in unsafe sex can add worst feelings of victimization, thus increasing the chances of suicidal thoughts. Victims of bullying are in great danger of suffering at the hands of sex predators. With false promises and a weak state of mind, the victim is easily sneered into sex without really attachments to create a positive relationship.
Without a doubt, being a victim of bullying can have devastating emotional and physical consequences. Consequences that not only affect teenagers, but adults that have gone through bullying in their life.
Stop It!
With all the information presented about the negative effects of bullying and the great number of victims who have been exposed to bullying, it is only right to explore positive ways to prevent bullying. Numerous schools have implemented procedures to deal with bullying, such as awareness assemblies, step-by-step procedures to investigate bullying, and counseling sessions to assist victims. However, many believe that bullying is mainly being approached with a reactive method instead of a preventive method. Teachers, counselors, and administrators will usually deal with the bullies once they have committed an offense, rather than having session before they have hurt someone. Bullying affects not only the victim, but also the bully, since he receives consequences that affect his academic performance as well his interaction with others. One of the best ways to prevent bullying starts by dealing with the root cause. Since bullies are exposed to negative experiences at home, educating parents about bullying and providing strategies to deal with positive parenting would help reduce the negative experiences at home.
Conclusion
In summary, bullying is a serious problem of the modern world, because its consequences are extremely negative, and sometimes catastrophic, both for the victims and for the bullies. In order to prevent bullying, we must teach children compassion, encourage participation in positive acts of kindness to others, and help others, allowing them to experience the benefits of doing so.
References
- Aluede, O., Adeleke, F., Omoike, D., & Afen-Akpaida, J. 2008. “A Review of the Extent, Nature, Characteristics and Effects of Bullying Behavior in Schools”. Journal of Instructional Psychology, 35(2), 151.
- Donegan, R. 2012. “Bullying and Cyberbullying: History, Statistics, Law, Prevention and Analysis”. The Elon Journal of Undergraduate Research in Communications, 3(1), 33-42.
- Due, P., Damsgaard, M. T., Lund, R., & Holstein, B. E. 2009. “Is Bullying Equally Harmful for Rich and Poor Children?: A Study of Bullying and Depression from Age 15 to 27”. The European Journal of Public Health, 19(5), 464-469.
- Huang, Q., Singh, V. K., & Atrey, P. K. 2014. “Cyberbullying Detection Using Social and Textual Analysis”. In ‘Proceedings of the 3rd International Workshop on Socially-Aware Multimedia’, (pp. 3-6). ACM.
- Kim, Y. S., Leventhal, B. L., Koh, Y. J., Hubbard, A., & Boyce, W. T. 2006. “School Bullying and Youth Violence: Causes or Consequences of Psychopathologic Behavior?”. Archives of General Psychiatry, 63(9), 1035-1041.
- Li, Q. 2006. “Cyberbullying in Schools: A Research of Gender Differences”. School Psychology International, 27(2), 157-170.
- Litwiller, B. J., & Brausch, A. M. 2013. “Cyberbullying and Physical bullying in Adolescent Suicide: The Role of Violent Behavior and Substance Use”. Journal of Youth and Adolescence, 42(5), 675-684.
- Pollastri, A. R., Cardemil, E. V., & O’Donnell, E. H. 2010. “Self-Esteem in Pure Bullies and Bully/Victims: A Longitudinal Analysis”. Journal of Interpersonal Violence, 25(8), 1489-1502.
- Varghese, Mary E., and M. Carole Pistole. 2017. “College Student Cyberbullying: Self-Esteem, Depression, Loneliness, And Attachment”. Journal of College Counseling 20(1):7-21.
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